


Fall For Ice Cream

by missema



Series: Kirkwall Tech [12]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, College, Dating, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Ice Cream, Lazy Days, Plans For The Future, Senior year, Why isn't it really fall yet?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-27
Updated: 2017-09-27
Packaged: 2019-01-06 00:00:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12199902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missema/pseuds/missema
Summary: It's fall but it doesn't feel like it. Unseasonably warm weather has her lounging in the quad where Sebastian happens by to bring her ice cream. There's a little bit of the talk about the past and the future, looking after senior year.





	Fall For Ice Cream

It was autumn, but there was a late burst of heat that filtered through Kirkwall for about a week. Sebastian was tired; Tuesdays were his longest days of classes and he'd been invited to lunch with the Grand Cleric today. Her conversation, no matter how pleasant she tried to be, was always riddled with questions he rather liked to avoid.

He was on campus after his last class when it wasn't quite afternoon or evening yet, and too hot for either that day. It was viciously uncomfortable, not just jarring to see the trees dying and readying for snow when the days were so overheated. A couple of his classes didn't have fans in them anymore, since they'd been safely stowed away for the season, making for sticky, sweaty classes. Crossing campus, his mind was only on getting home and changing his shirt.

He saw his girlfriend, laying in the quad wearing shorts and a sports bra. She must have been at the gym, Sebastian decided, but she'd stopped on her way home. Her bag was next to her, but Melissa was laying there, looking up at the sky. Or maybe she was sleeping. It was hard to tell until he got closer to her. He stood over her looking down and was about to ask her why she was in the quad, but she spoke before him.

"Sebastian, you're standing in my light," Melissa said in a drowsy voice.

"How did you know it was me?" he asked, sitting down.

"You want the short version or the long one?"

"Both," he said, grinning at her passive face. She still didn't have her eyes open, but the grin was evident in his voice.

"The short version is your shadow is different and I could smell your aftershave."

"And the long version? I'm eager to hear how my shadow is different," he said.

She yawned and said, "It's Sebastian-shaped."

He looked up across the quad to where the food trucks and restaurant stands still sold their food for the people passing by after class. The line wasn't too long at either the waffle or the ice cream place, but he decided against waffles on a hot day. 

"I'll buy you an ice cream, then you can explain," he said and got up from the ground. He left his bag next to hers, and he almost thought she didn't notice him leaving until she told him to get her another bananas and strawberry cone. Another one, she'd said and he chuckled at the realization that she'd been here for a while, just laying about.

When he came back she didn't even wait for him to sit down before explaining. "It's the way you walk. You move quietly for someone your size, and when I saw the shadow of a much larger person than the footfalls would have indicated, I suspected you. The scent of your aftershave made it very likely it was you; I don't think I've met anyone else that smells quite the same."

"I hope that's a compliment," he said, handing over the cone as she sat up.

"You should know very well that it is. I wouldn't have let you just stink for all these months, like 'oh that poor asshole, Sebastian, one day I'll tell him about his garbage smell'," she mimicked a Kirkwaller accent and Sebastian laughed. He tasted his own ice cream, catching a drip before it wound up lost on the ground. It wasn't enough to be refreshing but he appreciated the coolness of it all the same as he sat there, watching Melissa eat her own ice cream cone.

"Isabela's leaving after the spring semester," she told him. "She's going to work on one of those educational research vessels at sea for the whole summer."

"Really?" he asked. He knew Isabela had plans to leave Kirkwall eventually, but it sort of felt like the same eventually that lingered between him and Starkhaven. He'd go home, eventually.

"I'm not mad or anything, I'm just going to miss her. Missing her already, you know? Soon we'll graduate and I'll have to find a new place to live and she won't even be able to get my calls all the time."

He reached out and gave her a quick kiss, which she accepted but then wrinkled her nose. "I thought that was pistachio. I hate mint."

"Do you?" he asked mildly. He hadn't known or realized.

"Makes me puke," she confirmed, but then turned her gaze off to the distance. "What's going to happen after graduation?"

"We find apartments, go to work and I make you dinner every Wednesday night and we have sex in front of my fireplace," he said succinctly. His tone of voice may have suggested lightness, but it wasn't a joke -- he'd thought about it more than few times as the realities of graduation grew closer.

"Promise?" she asked, and he laughed, but his answer was sincere.

"Absolutely."

"How'd lunch with the Grand Cleric go today?" Melissa asked, then took a crunching bite into the cone of her ice cream. 

"Fine. She does what she always does, tells me to bridge the gap between my family, shows me whatever money my father has recently sent them and what she's told him of me."

"Why do you go?" she asked.

"I don't mind, to be honest. If it wasn't the Grand Cleric reporting on me, there would be more guards following me around. I kinda like the illusion of privacy I have, and she has good intentions. Maybe if I'd stayed in the Chantry instead of getting into Tech, I might be more receptive to them, but I committed to being here instead of going into the Chantry as my parents thought to force me to do."

"That's why you lived there? Because they were trying to force you to go into the Chantry?"

"They thought it would 'instill necessary discipline' in me and gave Elthina a large donation to try to force her to make me stay. To her credit, she didn't make me stay past when I needed the help, and she gave me the money, though I donated part of it back to the Chantry and took the rest to buy what I needed for school. I lived in the dorms and learned discipline the same way everyone else here does, by having a class kick me in the teeth until I kept on top of it."

Melissa smiled at him. "What class?"

"Engineering Design for Civil. I wasn't great at drafting, and I thought I was getting by in the class until my professor told me that I wasn't quite doing the work. His words were, 'the pipes for your sewage systems are going to burst and make shit fountains from under your town if you work like this'." They laughed together and were silent for a time, finishing their ice cream cones. His was melting rapidly, and he hated sticky fingers, so Sebastian inelegantly managed to eat his in about three bites before he could wear it.

"You call the Grand Cleric by her first name," she observed, but didn't say more.

"I've known her longer than I've lived in Kirkwall." It didn't explain much, but she accepted the answer all the same. "Can I drive you home?" he asked. 

The novelty of sitting in the middle of campus was wearing off, now that the ice cream was gone. Sebastian liked the outdoors only when he was doing something. He liked hiking and playing sports, but hated camping. It was too much like inviting bugs to bite, which was how he felt now. The ice cream was had left him vaguely smelling like candy, and he was sure he'd find a new bug bite someplace sensitive if he stayed sitting on the ground. Melissa had perked up some, but she still looked exhausted even as she sat smiling at him.

"Yeah sure. I was going to get up eventually, you know. I just was tired, I had tutoring and I did some of my work and then I went to the gym and I was going to walk home, but I stopped here instead. Probably too ambitious for a hot day," she mused, more to herself than to him. 

Sebastian stood, stuck out a hand and helped her to her feet. "I'll buy us a pizza," he offered to her as she bent to pull on her backpack. "I might get more work done at your apartment anyway. The pledges are doing something tonight and it's bound to be loud."

"Don't you have to be there?" she asked, but he shook his head. 

"Not at every event, especially things like tonight. I think they're just doing team-building." He was never specific when he told her things, not because they were such secrets but because it really wasn't all that interesting. They seemed like secrets to people outside the house, and maybe proper fraternities had secrets, but the KSE pledges were seriously just making t-shirts and learning how to cook tonight. They learned team work and life skills, so they could focus on civics and leadership at the upper levels.

But that thought fled as Melissa lingered in the late afternoon sunlight. She was burnished in gold, the light highlighting the latent amber color in her brown skin, shining off the black of her hair. He made her stand still so he could take a picture, and she laughed at him. He caught her laughing in a few of them and put his phone away so he could take her home.


End file.
